CHAPTER IIITHE TRAIN ROBBERS
When the colonel awoke next morning the train was running smoothly over the Iowa prairies, while low hills and brick factory chimneys announced Council Bluffs. The landscape was wide and monotonous; a sweep of illimitable cornfields in their winter disarray, or bleakly fresh from the plow, all painted with a palette holding only drabs and browns; here and there a dab of red in a barn or of white in windmill or house; but these livelier tints so scattered that they were no more than pin spots on the picture. The very sky was as dimly colored as the earth, lighter, yet of no brighter hue than the fog which smoked up from the ground. Later in the spring this same landscape would be of a delicate and charming beauty; in summer or autumn it would make the beholder’s pulses throb with its glorious fertility; but on a blurred March morning it was as dreary as the reveries of an aging man who has failed.
Nevertheless, Rupert Winter’s first conscious sensation was not depression, only a little tingle of interest and excitement, such as stings pleasantly one who rises to a prospect of conflict in which he has the confidence of his own strength. “By Jove!” he wondered, “whatever makes me feel so kiddish?”
His first impulse was to peep through his curtains into the car. It wore its early morning aspect of muffled berths and stuffy curtains, among which Miss Smith’s trig, carefully finished presence in a fresh white shirt-waist, attended by the pleasant whiffs of cologne water, gave the beholder a certain refreshing surprise. One hand (white and firm and beautifully cared for) held a wicker bottle, source of the pleasant whiffs; her sleek back braids were coiled about her comely head, and the hair grew very prettily in a blunted point on the creamy nape of her neck. It was really dark brown hair, but it looked black against the whiteness of her skin. She had very capable-looking shoulders, the colonel noted, and a flat back; perhaps she wasn’t pretty, but in a long while he had not seen a more attractive-looking woman. She made him think of a Bonne Celine rose, somehow. He could hear her talking to someone behind the berth’s curtains. Could those doleful moans emerge from Archie? Could a Winter boy be whimpering about the jar of the train in that fashion? Immediately he was aware that the sufferer was Randall, for Miss Smith spoke: “Drink the tea, and lie down again, I’ll attend to Mrs. Winter. Don’t you worry!”
“Getting solid with Randall,” commented the colonel. “Which is she—kind-hearted, or an accomplished villainess? Well, it’s interesting, anyhow.”
By the time he had made his toilet the train was slacking speed ready to halt in Council Bluffs, and all his suspicions rushed on deck again at the sight of Miss Smith and Archie walking outside.
He joined them, and he had to admit that Miss Smith looked as pleased as Archie at his appearance. Nor did she send a single furtive glance, slanting or backward, while they walked in the crisp, clean air. Once the train had started and Miss Smith was in the drawing-room, breakfasting with Mrs. Winter and Archie, he politely attended Mrs. Millicent through the morning meal in the dining-car. It was so good a meal that he naturally, although illogically, thought better ofMiss Smith’s prospects of innocence; and cheerily he sought Haley. He found him in the smoking compartment of the observation-car, having for companions no less personages than the magnate and a distinguished-looking New Englander, who, Rupert Winter made no doubt, was a Harvard professor of rank and renown among his learned kind. He knew the earmarks of the species. The New Englander’s pencil was flying over a little improvised pad of telegraph blanks, while he listened with absorbed interest to Haley’s rich Irish tones. There was a little sidewise lunge of Haley’s mouth, a faint twinkle of Haley’s frank and simple eyes which the colonel appraised at very nearly their real value. He knew that it isn’t in Irish-American nature to perceive a wide-open ear and not put something worth hearing into it. Besides, his sharp ears had brought him a key to the discourse, a sorrowful remark of the sergeant’s as he entered: “Yes, sor, thim wather torchures isterrible!”
He glanced suspiciously from one of Haley’s audience to the other. The newspaper cartoonist had pictured on all kinds of bodies of preying creatures, whether of the earth or air, the high brows, the round head, the delicate features, thethin cheeks, the straight line of the mouth, and the mild, inexpressive eyes of the man before him. He had been extolled as a far-sighted benefactor of the world, and execrated picturesquely as the king of pirates who would scuttle the business of his country without a qualm.
Winter, amid his own questionings and problems, could not help a scrutiny of a man whose power was greater than that of medieval kings. He sat consuming a cigarette, more between his fingers than his lips; and glancing under drooping eyelids from questioner to narrator. At the colonel’s entrance he looked up, as did Haley, who rose to his feet with an unconscious salute. “I’d be glad to spake wid youse a minnit, if I might, General,” said Haley, “about where I put your dress-shute case, sor.”
The colonel, of course, did not expect any remarks about a suit case when he got Haley by himself at the observation end of the car; but what he did get was of sufficient import to drive out of his mind a curt lecture about blackening the reputation of the army with lies about the Philippines. Haley had told him that he had seen the man with the two moles on his face jump out of his own car at Council Bluffs. He had simplystood on the platform, looking to right and left for a moment; then he had swung himself back on the car. Haley had watched him walk down the aisle and enter the drawing-room. He did not come out; Haley had found out that the drawing-room belonged to Edwin S. Keatcham, “the big railroad man, sor.”
“It doesn’t seem likely thathewould be an accomplice of a kidnapper,” mused the colonel. “The man might have gone in there while he was out.”
“Sure, he might, sor; ’twas mesilf thinking that same; and I wint beyant to the observation-car, and there the ould gintleman was smoking.”
“And you stopped to tell yarns to that other gentleman instead of getting back and following—”
“No, sor, I beg your pardon, sor; I was kaping me eyes open and on him; for himsilf was in the observation-car where you are now, sor, until we come in, and thin he walked back, careless like, to his own car. Will I be afther following him?”
“Yes; don’t lose him.”
They did not lose him; they both saw him enter the drawing-room and almost immediately come out and sit down in one of the open sections.
“See if you can’t find out from the conductor where he is going,” the colonel proposed to Haley; and he frowned over his thoughts for a bad quarter of an hour at the window. The precipitate of all this mental ferment was a determination to stick close to the boy, saying nothing. He hoped that when they stopped over night at Salt Lake City, according to Aunt Rebecca’s plan, they might shake off the “brother’s” company. The day passed uneventfully. He played bridge with Mrs. Millicent and Miss Smith and Archie, while Aunt Rebecca kept up her French with one of Bentzon’s novels.
Afterward she said grimly to him: “I think you must have been converted out in the Philippines; you never so much as winced, that last hand; no, you sat there smiling over your ruin as sweetly as if you enjoyed it.”
The colonel smiled again. “Ah, but, you see, I did enjoy it; didn’t you notice the hand? No? Well, it was worth watching. It was the rubber game; they were twenty-four and we were twenty-six and we were on the seventh round; Miss Smith had made it hearts. She sat on my left, dummy on my right. Millicent had the lead. She had four little spades, a little club, the queen ofhearts and a trey; dummy had the queen, the ten and the nine of spades, it had the king of hearts and three clubs with the jack at the top. I had a lovely diamond suit which I hadn’t had a chance to touch, top sequence, ace, king, queen; I had the jack of trumps and the jack of spades; and the queen and a little club. I hadn’t a lead, you understand; Millicent had taken five tricks and they had taken one; they needed six to win the game, we needed two; see? Well, Millicent hadn’t any diamonds to lead me, and unhappily she didn’t think to lead trumps through dummy, which would have made a world of difference. She led a club; dummy put on the jack. I knew Miss Smith had the ace and one low heart; no clubs, a lot of low diamonds, and she might or might not have a spade. I figured that she had the ace and a little one; if she would trump in with the little one, as ninety-nine out of a hundred women would have done, her ace and her partner’s king would fall together; or, at worst, he would have to trump her diamond lead, after she had led out her king of spades, and lead spades, which I could trump and bring in all my diamonds. Do you take in the situation?”
“You mean that Janet had the king of spadesalone, the ace and the little trump and four worthless diamonds? I see. It is a chance for the grandcoup; I reckon she played it.”
“Shedid!” cried the colonel with unction. “She slapped that ace on the trick, she modestly led her king of spades, gathered in my jack, then ‘she stole, she stole my child away,’ my little jack of trumps; it fell on dummy’s king, and dummy led out his spades and I had to see that whole diamond suit slaughtered. They made their six tricks, the game and the rubber; and I wanted to clap my hands over the neatness of it.”
“She is a good player,” agreed Aunt Rebecca, “and a very pleasant person. You remember the epitaph, don’t you, Bertie? ‘She was so pleasant.’ Yet Janet has had a heap of trouble; but, after all, happiness is not a condition but a temperament; I suppose Janet has the temperament. She’s a good loser, too; and she never takes advantage of the rules.”
“She certainly loves a straight game,” reflected the colonel. “I confess I don’t like the kind of woman that is always grabbing a trick if some one plays out of the wrong hand.”
He said something of the kind to Millicent, obtaining but scant sympathy in that quarter.
“She’s deep, Bertie; I told you that,” was the only reply, “but I’m watching. I have reason for my feeling.”
“Maybe you have been misinformed,” ventured her brother-in-law with proper meekness.
“Not at all,” retorted she sharply. “I happen to know that she worked against me with the Daughters.”
“Daughters,” the colonel repeated inanely, “your daughters?”
“Certainly not! The Daughters of the Revolution.”
“It’s a mighty fine society, that; did a lot during the Spanish War. And you are the state president, aren’t you?”
“No, Rupert,” returned Mrs. Melville with dignity, “I am no longer state regent. By methods that would shame the most hardened men politicians I was defeated; why! didn’t you read about it?”
“You know I only came back from the Philippines in February.”
“It was in all the Chicago papers. I was interviewed myself. I assure you the other candidates (there were two) tried the verylowestpolitical methods. Melville said it was scandalous.There were at least three luncheons given against me. It wasn’t the congress, it was the lobby defeated me. And their methods! I would not believe that gentlewoman could stoop to such infamy of misrepresentation.” The colonel chewed his mustache; he felt for that reporter of the Chicago paper; he was evidently getting a phonographic record now; he made an inarticulate rumble of sympathy in his throat which was as the clucking of the driver to the mettled horse. Mrs. Melville gesticulated with Delsartian grace, as she poured forth her woes.
“They accused me of a domineering spirit; they said I was trying to set up a machine.I!I worked for them, many a time, half the night, at my desk; never was a letter unanswered; I did half the work of the corresponding secretary; yet at the crucial momentshe betrayed me! I learned more in those two days of the petty jealousy, the pitiless malevolence ofsomewomen than I had known all my life before; but at the same time, to the faithful band of friends”—the colonel had the sensation of listening to the record again—“whose fidelity was proof against ridicule and cruel misrepresentation, I return a gratitude that will never wane. Rupert”—she turned herself inthe seat and waved the open palm of her hand in a graceful and dramatic gesture, “—those women not only stooped to malignant falsehoods, they not only trampled parliamentary law underfoot, but they circulated through the hall a cartoon called theMaking of the Slate. Of course, we had our quarters at a hotel, and after the evening meeting, after I had retired, in fact, a bell-boy brought me a message; it was necessary to have a meeting at once, to decide for the secretaryship, as we had found out Mrs. Ellennere was false. The ladies in the adjoining rooms and the others of us on the board who were loyal came into my chamber. Rupert, will you believe it, those women, had a grotesque picture ofus, with faces cut out of the newspapers—of course, all our pictures were in the papers—and they had the audacity and the meanness to picture me in—in the garments of night!”
“That was pretty tough. But where does Miss Smith come in?”
“She was at the convention. She is a Daughter. I’ve always said we are too lax in our admissions.”
“Who drew the picture?”
“It may not be Miss Smith, but—she doesdraw. I’msurethat she worked against me; she covered up her footprints so that I have no proof; but I suspect her. She’s deep, Bertie, she’s deep. But she can’t hoodwinkme. I’ll find her out.”
The colonel experienced the embarrassment that is the portion of a rash man trying to defend one woman against another; he retreated because he perceived defense was in vain; but he did not feel his growing opinion of Miss Smith’s innocence menaced by Mrs. Melville’s convictions.
She played too square a game for a kidnapper—and Smith was the commonest of names. No, there must be some explanation; Rupert Winter had lived too long not to distrust the plausible surface clue. “It is the improbable that always happens, and the impossible most of the time,” Aunt Rebecca had said once. He quite agreed with her whimsical phrase.
Nothing happened to arouse his suspicions that day. Haley reported that Cary Mercer was going on to San Francisco. The conductor did not know his name; he seemed to know Mr. Keatcham and was with him in his drawing-room most of the time. Had the great man a secretary with him? Yes, he seemed to have, a little fellow who had not much to say for himself, and jumpedwhenever his boss spoke to him. There was also a valet, an Englishman, who did not respond properly to conversational overtures. They were all going to get off at Denver.
Haley was not misinformed, as the colonel perceived with his own eyes—and he saw Cary Mercer bow in parting to the great man, who requited the low salute with a gruff nod. Here was an opportunity for a nearer glimpse of Mercer, possibly for that explanation in which Winter still had a lurking hope. He caught Mercer just in the car doorway, and politely greeted him: “Mr. Mercer, I think? You may not remember me, Colonel Winter. I met you in Cambridge, three years ago—”
It seemed a brutal thing to do, to recall a meeting under such circumstances; but if Mercer could give the explanation he would excuse him; it was better than suspecting an innocent man. But there was no opportunity for explanation. Mercer turned a blank and coldly suspicious face toward him. “I beg pahdon,” he said in his Southern way, “I think you have made a mistake in the person.”
“And are younotMr. Cary Mercer?” The colonel felt the disagreeable resemblance of hisown speeches to those made in newspaper stories by the gentleman who wishes his old friend to change a fifty-dollar bill or to engage in an amusing game with a thimble. Mercer saw it as well as he. “Try some one from the country,” he remarked with an unpleasant smile, brushing past, while the color mounted to the colonel’s tanned cheek. “Thenexttime you meet me,” Rupert Winter vowed, “you’ll know me.”
A new porter had come on at Denver; a light brown, chubby, bald man with a face that radiated friendliness. He was filled with the desire for conversation, and he had worked on the road for eight years, hence could supplementOver the Rangeand the other guide-books with personal gossip. He showed marked deference to the colonel, which that unassuming and direct man could not quite fathom, until Archie enlightened him. Archie smiled, a queer, chewed-up smile which the colonel hailed with:
“Why are you making fun of me, young man?”
“It’s Lewis, the porter; he follows you round and listens to you in such an awestruck way.”
“But why?”
“Why, Sergeant Haley told him about you;and I told him alittle, and he says he wishes you’d been on the train when they had the hold-ups. This is an awful road for hold-ups, he says. He’s been at five hold-ups.”
“And what does he advise?”
“Oh, he says, hold up your hands and they won’t hurt you.”
“Well, I reckon his advice is sound,” laughed the colonel. “See you follow it, Archie.”
“Shallyouhold up your hands, Uncle Bertie?” asked Archie.
“Much the wisest course; these fellows shoot.”
Archie looked disappointed. “I suppose so,” he sighed. “I’m afraid I’d want to, if they were pointing pistols at me. Lewis was on the train once when a man showed fight. He wouldn’t put up his hands, and the bandit plugged him, like a flash; he fell crosswise over the seat and the blood spurted across Lewis’ wrist; he said it was like a hot jet of water.”
The homely and bizarre horror of the picture had evidently struck home to Archie; he half shivered.
“Too much imagination,” grumbled the colonel to himself. “A Winter ought to take to fighting like a duck to water!” He betook himselfto Miss Smith; and he was uneasily conscious that he was going to her for consoling. But he felt better after a little talk about Archie with her. Plainly she thought Archie had plenty of spirit; although, of course, he hadn’t told her about the bandits. The negro was “kidding” the passengers; and women shouldn’t be disturbed by such nonsense. The colonel had old-fashioned views of guarding his womankind from the harsh ways of the world. Curious, he reflected, what sense Miss Smith seemed to have; and how she understood things. He felt better acquainted with her than a year’s garrison intercourse would have made him with any other woman he knew.
That afternoon, they two sat watching the fantastic cliffs which took grotesque semblance of ruined castles crowning their barren hillsides; or of deserted amphitheaters left by some vanished race to crumble. They had talked of many things. She had told him of the sleepy old South Carolinian town where she was born, and the plantation and the distant cousin who was like her mother, and the hospital where she had been taught, and the married sister who had died. Such a narrow, laborious, innocent existence as she described! How cheerfully, too, she hadshouldered her burdens! They talked of the South and of the Philippines; a little they talked of Archie and his sorrow and of the eternal problems that have troubled the soul of man since first death entered the world. As they talked, the colonel’s suspicions faded into grotesque shadows. “Millicent is ridiculous,” quoth he. Then he fell to wondering whether there had been a romance in Miss Smith’s past life. “Such a handsome woman would look high,” he sighed. Only twenty-four hours ago he had called Miss Smith “nice-looking,” with careless criticism. He was quite unconscious of his change of view. That night he felt lonely, of a sudden; the old wound in his heart ached; his future looked as bleak as the mountain-walled plains through which he was speeding. After a long time the train stopped with a jar and rattle, ending in a sudden shock. He raised the curtain to catch the flash of the electric lights at Glenwood. Out of the deep defile they glittered like diamonds in a pool of water. Why should he think of Miss Smith’s eyes? With an impatient sigh, he pulled down the curtain and turned over to sleep.
His thoughts drifted, floated, were submerged in a wavering procession of pictures; he was backin the Philippines; they had surprised the fort; how could that be when he was on guard? But they were there— He sat up in his berth. Instinctively he slipped the revolver out of his bag and held it in one hand, as he peeped through the crevice of the curtains. There was no motion, no sound of moving; but heads were emerging between the curtains in every direction; and Archie was standing, his hands shaking above his tumbled brown head and pale face. A man in a soft hat held two revolvers while another man was pounding on the drawing-room door, gruffly commanding those inside to come out. “No, we shall not come out,” responded Aunt Rebecca’s composed, well-bred accents, her neat enunciation not disturbed by a quiver. “If you want to kill an old woman, you will have to break down the door.”
“Let them alone, Shay, it takes too long; let’s finish here, first,” called the man with the revolver; “they’ll come soon enough when we want them. Here, young feller, fish out! Nobody’ll get hurt if you keep quiet; if you don’t you’ll get a dose like the man in number six, two years ago. Hustle, young feller!”
The colonel was eying every motion, everyshifting from one foot to the other. Let them once get by Archie—
The boy handed over his pocket-book.
“Now your watch,” commanded the brigand; “take it, Shay!”
“Won’t you please let me keep that watch?” faltered Archie; “that was papa’s watch.”
The childish name from the tall lad made the robber laugh. “And mama’s little pet wants to keep it, does he? Well, he can’t. Get a move on you!”
The colonel had the sensation of an electric shock; as the second robber grabbed at the fob in the boy’s belt, Archie struck him with the edge of his open hand so swiftly and so fiercely under the jaw that he reeled back against his companion. The colonel’s surprise did not disturb the automatic aim of an old fighter of the plains; his revolver barked; and he sprang out, on the man he shot. “Get back in the berths, all of you,” he shouted; “give me a chance to shoot!”
The voice of the porter, whose hands had been turning up the lights not quite steadily, now pealed out with camp-meeting power, “Dat’s it; give de colonel a chance to do some killing!”
Both bandits were sprawling on the floor ofthe aisle, one limp and moaning; but the other got one hand up to shoot; only to have Archie kick the revolver out of it, while at the same instant an umbrella handle fell with a wicked whack on the man’s shoulder. The New England professor was out of his berth. He had been a baseball man in his own college days; his bat was a frail one, but he hit with a will; and a groan told of his success. Nevertheless, the fellow scrambled to his feet. Mrs. Melville was also out of her berth, thanks to which circumstance he was able to escape; as the colonel (who had grappled with the other man and prevented his rising) must needs have shot through his sister-in-law to hit the fleeing form.
Miss Smith was sitting beside Archie, holding the watch. Page67
“What’s the matter?” demanded Mrs. Melville, while the New Englander used an expression which, no doubt, as a good church-member, he regretted, later, and the colonel thundered: “All the women back into their berths. Don’t anybody shoot! You, professor, look after that fellow on the floor.” He was obeyed; instinctively, the master of the hour is obeyed. The porter came forward and helped the New Englander bind the prostrate outlaw, with two silk handkerchiefs and a pair of pajamas, guard mountbeing supplied by three men in very startling costumes; and a kind of seraglio audience behind the curtains of the berth being enacted by all the women in the car, only excepting Aunt Rebecca and Miss Smith. Aunt Rebecca, in her admirable traveling costume of a soft gray silk wrapper, looked as undisturbed as if midnight alarms were an every-night feature of journeys. Miss Smith’s black hair was loosely knotted; and her face looked pale, while her dark eyes shone. They all heard the colonel’s revolver; they all saw the two men who had met him at the car door spring off the platform into the dark. The robbers had horses waiting. The colonel got one shot; he saw the man fall over his horse’s neck; but the horse galloped on; and the night, beyond the little splash of light, swallowed them completely.
After the conductor and the engineer had both consulted him, and the express messenger had appeared, armed to the teeth, a little too late for the fray, but not too late for lucid argument, Winter made his way back to the car. Miss Smith was sitting beside Archie; she was holding the watch, which had played so important a part in the battle, up under the electric light to examine an inscription. The loose black sleeves of herblouse fell back, revealing her arms; they were white and softly rounded. She looked up; and the soldier felt the sudden rush of an emotion that he had not known for years; it caught at his throat almost like an invisible hand.
“Well, Archie,” he said foolishly, “good for jiu-jitsu!”
Archie flushed up to his eyes.
“Why didn’t you obey orders, young man, and hold up your hands?” said Colonel Rupert Winter. “You’re as bad as poor Haley, who is nearly weeping that he had no chance, but only broke away from Mrs. Haley in time to see the robbers make off.”
“I—I did at first; but I got so mad I forgot,” stammered Archie happily. “Afterward you were my superior officer and I had to do what you said.”
All the while he chaffed the boy, he was watching for that beautiful look in Janet Smith’s eyes; and wondering when he could get her off by herself to brag to her of the boy’s courage. When his chance at a few words did come he chuckled: “Regular fool Winter! I knew he would act in just that absurd, reckless way.” Then he caught the look he wanted; it surely was a lovely, womanlylook; and it meant—what in thunderdidit mean? As he puzzled, his pulses gave the same unaccountable, smothering leap; and he felt as the boy of twenty had felt, coming back from his first battle to his first love.